“I know why you are awake and dressed!” he said harshly. “You are expecting him! Are you?”
She could not answer; her breath had deserted her, and she merely stood there, one hand resting on the table, her frightened eyes fixed on the man confronting her.
But at his first step forward she sprang in front of him. She strove to speak; the infernal blaze in his eyes terrified her.
“Is this what you have done to me?” he said; and moved to pass her, but she caught his arm, and he halted.
CHAPTER XXIV
A PERSONAL AFFAIR
“My God!” he said, “it would not surprise me to find him here in the house!... He is here — or you would never wear a face like that!... What do you mean to do, block my way in my own house?” as she confronted him.
“Kurt—” Her white lips merely formed the word.
“Is he here? Answer me!”
“I — he — —”
“Answer me!”
Behind them a voice broke in quietly: “I’ll answer for us all.... Don’t touch that holster, General! I can kill you first.... Now, then, am I to pass that door without violence?... Because I’m going to pass it one way or another — —”
He came forward, his naked sabre shining in the candle light, his grey eyes level, cool, and desperate.
Von Reiter stared at this tall young fellow in the gay uniform of the Guides. His hand, which had instantly moved toward his holster, remained suspended.
“I am going out of that door,” repeated Guild.
“Will General Baron von Reiter be good enough to move aside?”
The German’s eyes narrowed. “So,” he said very quietly, “it is not to be the hand after all, but an exchange of cards. I am not sorry—” With a movement too swift for the eye to follow, his sword was out and glittering in his hand, and he sprang on Guild, beating at his guard, raining blows like lightning.
The girl had fallen against the table, one hand at her throat as though choking back the bursting cry of fright; her brain rang with the dissonance and metallic clamour; the flashing steel dazzled her. Two oak chairs fell crashing as Guild gave ground under the terrific onslaught; there was not a word spoken, not a sound except the infernal din of the sabres and the ceaseless shifting of armed heels on the floor.
Suddenly von Reiter went down heavily; the doormat slipping under foot had flung him to the floor with a crash across a fallen chair. After a second or two he groaned.
Guild looked down at him, bewildered, sword in hand — watched him as he struggled to his feet. The German was ghastly white. A fit of coughing shook him and he tried to disguise it with his hand.
“Pick up your sabre!” motioned Guild.
Von Reiter stooped, recovered his sword, adjusted the hilt to his hand. He coughed again, and there was a trace of blood on his lips, but his face was dead white. He looked very steadily at Guild.
“Acknowledgments to the Comte d’Yvoir,” he said with an effort; and the shadow of a smile touched his thin, grim lips.
“Do I pass?” demanded Guild, as grimly.
Von Reiter started to speak, and suddenly his mouth was full of blood.
“Kurt,” cried the girl in an agonized voice, “do you mean to kill him or that he is to kill you! — here — before my face?”
“I mean — just — that!”
He sprang at Guild again like a tiger, but Guild was on him first, and the impact hurled von Reiter against the table. His sabre fell clattering to the floor.
“The impact hurled von Reiter against the table”
For a moment, white as a corpse, he looked at his opponent with sick eyes, then, suddenly faint, he slid into the great leather chair. There was more blood on his lips; Guild, breathing heavily, bent over and looked at him, ignorant of what had happened.
Karen came and took his hand in hers. Then a slight groan escaped him and he opened his eyes.
“Are you badly hurt?” asked Guild.
“I’m a little sick, that’s all. I think when I fell some ribs broke — or something — —”
“I meant fairly by you,” said Guild miserably.
“You played fair. It was bad luck — bad luck — that’s all.” He closed his pain-sickened eyes: “God, what luck,” he mumbled— “really atrocious!”
Guild, still holding his naked sword, drew his automatic with his left hand. Then he looked silently at Karen.
“Can’t you leave the house by the garden?” she whispered tremulously.
“The gate is padlocked.”
“Kervyn, they’ll kill you if you step out of that door!”
Von Reiter, drowsy with pain, opened his eyes:
“No, they won’t,” he said. “Be kind enough to speak to my aide. I — I’m afraid I’m rather — ill.”
He glanced at Guild: “Honour of an officer,” he added weakly.
Karen stepped to the door and flung it open.
“Captain!” she called sharply.
A moment later the young hussar aide-de-camp who had escorted Guild to the British lines came clanking in.
He glanced obliquely at Guild and at Karen, but when his eyes fell on von Reiter he stared, astonished. Nevertheless, his spurred heels clicked together at salute.
Von Reiter’s eyes became ironical. He looked for a moment at his aide, then his gaze wandered to Karen and to Guild.
“Where do you desire to go?” he asked with an effort.
“To Antwerp.”
“The road is still open.” And, to the hussar: “Safe conduct for Captain the Comte d’Yvoir across the railway. Write it now.”
“And for my comrade, Mr. Darrel, and ten recruits,” said Guild quietly.
“And for his comrade, Mr. Darrel, and ten recruits,” repeated von Reiter in a failing voice. But he was smiling.
“And — for me!” said Karen.
Von Reiter’s eyes had almost closed; he opened them again, heavily, as she spoke. Karen bent over him:
“Kurt, I must go. I can not remain here now. Besides — I want — my — husband.”
“Think well,” he said drowsily. “Think diligently — at this moment — solemn — supreme—” He raised himself a little, then relapsed: “God,” he murmured, “what luck to meet with under your own roof!...” And, to the hussar: “Write it that Miss Karen Girard goes also — if she so desires.”
There was a silence. The hussar scribbled on the stamped paper in his tablets. After he had finished he laid the tablets and the fountain pen on von Reiter’s knees. Very slowly the latter affixed his signature.
He said to the hussar: “I am ill. Go to Trois Fontaines and bring me a medical officer.”
When the hussar had gone and when the whirr of the automobile had died away down the drive, Guild aided the hurt man to a sofa and Karen brought pillows from a bedroom.
He was very thirsty, too, and she gave him water continually. At intervals there were slight signs of mental wandering, perhaps symptoms of pneumonia, from his crushed ribs, for he coughed a great deal and the fever already reddened his blond skin. But in the main his mind seemed to be clear. He opened his light-blue eyes and glanced at Guild continually.
“Bad luck, old chap,” he said in English, “but no reflection on you. Just bad luck, bad, very bad! We Germans usually have an ally in God. But the trinity is incomplete without luck.”
Guild said in a low voice: “I am really sorry, von Reiter. I hope you will come out all right. God knows I bear you no ill will.”
“Many thanks. I shall come out all right. There is much work to do.” A ghost of the ironical smile touched his feverish lips again. “And much work to be done after this business in Europe is settled.... I mean in America. She must pay her reckoning. She must settle with us Germans.... I wish it might come soon — now! — while their present administration remains — while yet this dull President and his imbecile and grotesque cabinet ministers are in power.... I beg your pardon — seeing you in that uniform made me forget that you are al
so Mr. Guild.”
But the irony in his wearied eyes made it very plain that he had not forgotten.
“Karen?” he said presently. She leaned forward in her chair beside him.
“It was just bad luck, very bad luck,” he muttered; “but yours is luck” — he turned his dulled eyes toward Guild— “luck to be envied.... Some day I hope it may be — the hand.”
“It is now, if you wish,” said Guild.
The other shook his head: “Too soon, too soon,” he muttered. “Even a German officer has his — limits. Between you and my luck I’m in a bad way — a very bad mess.”
Karen bent over his hand and touched it with her lips.
The fever was gaining; he began to roll his blond head from side to side, muttering of love and luck and of the glory of God and the German Empire. A slight smile remained on his lips.
Before the automobile arrived from Trois Fontaines the fever seized him fiercely. His coughing racked him incessantly now, and the first heavy hemorrhage soaked his grey tunic and undershirt.
They eased him all they could, laying open his broad blond chest and the ribs now terribly discoloured where his fall had crushed them in again under the bandage.
How the man could have risen and come at him again Guild could not understand. He was terribly shocked.
Dreadful sounds came from his laboured breathing; he lay with eyes closed now, one burning hand lying in Karen’s.
Toward four o’clock in the morning a far, faint sound penetrated the room.
Von Reiter’s eyes opened. “Halt!” he whispered. “Who goes there?”
It was Death. He seemed to understand that, for he sighed very lightly, his hand closed on Karen’s, and he lay gazing straight upward with brilliant eyes.
A few moments later there came a rush, a crunching of gravel, the loud purr of the motor outside.
Then Karen opened the door and a medical officer entered the room in haste.
Guild turned to Karen: “I must go to the woods and bring in my men and Darrel. Dearest, are you decided to go with me?”
“I could not remain here now. I do not wish to.”
“Then wait for me,” he said, and went out into the night.
A few moments later they took von Reiter upstairs to his own room. His mind seemed to clear again for a while and he said feebly but distinctly to his aide-de-camp:
“My daughter and her fiancé, the Comte d’Yvoir, are going to Antwerp for their wedding. I remember that military trains now leave Trois Fontaines by way of Trois Vierges, Liège, and Lesten. We control to Lesten, I think.”
“Yes, Excellence.”
“Write for me that my daughter and the Comte d’Yvoir shall be accorded transportation as far as we control. You will take them to Trois Fontaines in my automobile; you will make personal requisition of the chef-de-gar for the privacy of a compartment. You will affix to the outside of the compartment a notice that the persons in possession are travelling on my business and under my personal protection, and that they are not to be detained or interfered with in any way.... Write it separately to be affixed.” His voice was weak but perfectly distinct.
The hussar wrote steadily in his tablets, finished, and waited.
“Hold them while I sign,” whispered von Reiter. He signed both orders.
“Take them now. I shall not need the car. I shall be here a long time — a — long — time. I am ill. So inform headquarters by telegraph.”
“At orders, Excellence.”
Von Reiter closed his eyes: “Say to the Comte d’Yvoir that it was — bad luck — very bad luck.... But not — his fault.... Tell him I am — contented — that a Gueldres is to marry my — daughter.”
The aide saluted. But the sick man said nothing more.
Von Reiter was still unconscious when Guild returned from the forest.
Karen met him on the steps; he drew her aside:
“Dear,” he whispered, “there has been more violence during my absence. The Lesse men caught a traitor — a wretched charcoal burner from Moresnet — prowling about their camp.
“They hung him with his own belt. I saw him hanging to a beech-tree.
“Darrel was greatly worried when I told him that the Courlands had been forced to continue on to Luxembourg City. He has gone to the hamlet of Croix to hire a peasant to drive him after them and try to overtake them.
“As for the others, they will not come to Antwerp with me now. They have seen ‘red’ again; and in spite of all I could do they have started back toward Lesse to ‘drive’ Uhlans as they saw the wild game driven.”
The girl shivered.
Guild made a hopeless gesture: “It means the death of every man among them. The Uhlans will do the hunting and the driving, not the poor, half-crazed peasants.... It means the end of Lesse and of every man who had ever called it home.”
The hussar appeared at the door. Guild looked up, returned the precise salute, and his careworn features softened as he listened to the instructions and the parting message from the now unconscious officer above.
There was a silence, then:
“Karen,” he said quietly, “are you ready?”
“Yes.”
The hussar asked whether there was luggage, and learning that there was he sent the chauffeur in to bring out Guild’s box and Karen’s suit-case and satchel.
The girl ran upstairs to the sick room. They admitted her.
Guild was standing by the car when she returned, a drooping, listless figure, her handkerchief pressed to her face. He gave her his arm and aided her into the car. The hussar stepped in beside the chauffeur.
Dawn was just breaking behind the house; the evergreens stood out, massive and black against the silvering east.
As the car moved slowly out of the gravel circle the first bird twittered.
Guild bent over the girl beside him: “Is he still unconscious?”
“Yes.”
“Is there any chance?”
“They don’t know. It is the lungs. His body is all crushed in — —”
She rested her cheek against his shoulder, weeping, as the great grey car rushed on through the pallour of early dawn.
CHAPTER XXV
WHO GOES THERE!
Stretched out flat on the seat of a railway carriage, her tear-marred face buried in her arms, her dishevelled hair tumbled around her neck and shoulders, Karen lay asleep. In that car all the other compartments seemed to be full of Saxon reserve artillery officers, their knobbed helmets shrouded in new grey slips, their new, unwrinkled uniforms suggestive of a very recent importation from across the Rhine.
Ahead, cattle cars, ore cars, and flat cars composed the long train, the former filled with battery horses and cannoniers, the latter loaded with guns, caissons, battery waggons, forges, and camp equipment, all in brand-new grey paint.
Except when the train stopped at some heavily guarded station, nobody came to their compartment. But at all stations officers opened the doors and silently examined Guild’s credentials — energetic, quick-moving, but civil men, who, when the credentials proved acceptable, invariably saluted his uniform with a correctness impeccable.
Nevertheless, before the train moved out again, always there was a group of officers gazing in polite perplexity at the green jacket and forage cap and the cherry-coloured riding breeches of a regiment which, they were perfectly aware, was already in the saddle against them.
At one station Guild was able to buy bread and cheese and fruit. But Karen still slept profoundly, and he did not care to awaken her.
From the car windows none of the tragic traces of war were visible except only the usual clusters of spiked helmets along the line; the inevitable Uhlans riding amid the landscape; slowly moving waggon-trains pursuing roads parallel to the railway; brief glimpses of troops encamped in fields. But nothing of the ravage and desolation which blackened the land farther south was apparent.
In the latitude of Liège, however, Guild could see from the car windows
the occasional remains of ruined bridges damming small streams; and here and there roofless and smoke-stained walls, or the blackened debris of some burnt farm or factory or mill.
But the northern Ardennes did not appear to have suffered very much from invasion as far as he could make out; and whether the region was heavily occupied by an invading army he could not determine from the glimpses he obtained out of the car windows.
The line, however, was vigilantly guarded; that he could see plainly enough; but the sky-line of the low rolling country on either side might be the limits of German occupation for all he could determine.
Two nights’ constant wakefulness had made him very sleepy. He drowsed and nodded in his corner by the shaking window, rousing himself at intervals to cast a watchful glance at Karen.
She still slept like a worn-out child.
In the west the sun was already level with the car windows — a cherry-hued ball veiled slightly in delicate brown haze. The train had stopped at a siding in a young woodland. He opened the window to the fresh, sweet air and looked out at the yellowing autumn leaves which the setting sun made transparent gold.
It was very still; scarcely a sound except from very high in the air somewhere came a faint clattering noise. And after a while he turned his head and looked up at a flight of aeroplanes crossing the line at an immense height.
Stately, impressive, like a migration of wide-winged hawks, they glided westward, the red sun touching their undersides with rose. And he watched them until they became dots, and disappeared one by one in mid-heaven.
Presently, along the main track, came rushing a hospital train, the carriages succeeding one another like flashes of light, vanishing into perspective with a diminishing roar and leaving in its wake an odour of disinfectants.
Then the train he was on began to move; soldiers along the rails stood at attention; a company of Uhlans cantered along a parallel road, keeping pace with the cars for a while. Then the woods closed in again, thick, shaggy forest land which blotted out the low-hanging sun.
He closed the window, turned and glanced at Karen. She slept. And he lay back in his corner and closed his haggard eyes.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 772